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Angola Announces Plan To Lay Undersea Cable To Brazil

Angola Announces Plan To Lay Undersea Cable To Brazil

From Business Day Live

Angola’s planned undersea cable to South America will cut data transmission times between stock markets in Brazil and Hong Kong and open a new route between Africa and the US, the head of state-owned Angola Cables has said.

France’s Alcatel-Lucent, Japan’s NEC, and TE Connectivity were bidding for an estimated $170-million contract to lay the 6,000km cable between Africa’s second-biggest oil producer and Brazil, Angola Cables CEO Antonio Nunes said last week in an interview in Luanda. Construction would start early next year and be completed in about 18 months.

He said the cable would quicken South American telecommunications access to Asia by cutting out North America and Europe and running via Africa instead. It would be able to carry almost as much data as West Africa’s existing link to Europe.

After crossing the Atlantic, the route will initially run south from Angola to SA, then to Africa’s east coast and existing lines to Asia.

The sub-sea route would create “the shortest distance between the São Paulo and Hong Kong stock markets, which will be appealing to banks”, Mr Nunes said. “Even saving 100-160 millionths of a second adds up to a lot over time.”

He said Angola wanted to further reduce transmission times from South America to Asia by linking to networks with eastern neighbours Zambia and Tanzania within two years to avoid having to send data to SA. The cables are part of Angola’s plans to become a regional telecommunications hub and ease its dependence on oil, which accounts for 97 percent of exports and 75 percent of government tax revenue.

“We’re in a good geographic location, quite lucky being between Nigeria and SA, and at the other end of the Brazil line,” Mr Nunes said. “The point is we’re in the middle so we can distribute traffic.”

Written by Colin McClelland/ Read more at Business Day Live